I imagine many of you reached this piece through the 2000 film starring Eric Bana, who gives a magnificent performance:ChopperThat film also led me to research Mark Read, so in that sense we are following the same curiosity. What increasingly surprised me was discovering that beneath the huge body and biker moustache lay someone more complicated than the lucky psychopath and criminal I had seen in the film. Thousands of people among us share the story of a man who spent a troubled youth involved in countless crimes and fights, underwent intensive psychiatric treatment and was a complete menace to family and neighbours. Many are regular prison inmates. So what distinguished Mark Brandon Read from all those criminal lives and made him an Australian icon, role model and hero? Media hype? Popular culture? Modern people’s uncontrollable interest in bloody, murderous stories and the lives that embody them? Or was he truly a courageous antihero answering evil with evil? I don’t know either. What I do know is that his life was spent on death’s edge, defying it, and ended with the same stubborn, independent attitude. Half of it belonged to the underworld as a torturer and killer; the rest to a family man, writer, entertainer, painter and even actor. In that respect, Chopper is a figure deserving attention and respect. The truly surprising part is that a man from such a world produced widely appreciated work in several branches of art. That’s what caught me. Imagine someone with a murderous past, who tortured victims in various ways, writing bestsellers and a children’s book, painting pictures selling for an average of $6,500 each, and making a rap album on top of it all. Have you imagined it? Your stock image of the common criminal suddenly becomes confused, doesn’t it? So generalisations and prejudice really are the obstacles that restrict us and narrow the windows through which we see the world. And if you’re lucky in life, whatever good or bad you’ve done, people hundreds of kilometres away, all over the world, may have ‘King Kong’ tattooed above their navels simply to resemble you, thanks to the power of the press and media. They may take photos where you scattered a man’s brains with a shotgun and post them on Facebook. It brought to mind ‘Duster’ Hoggins in Cloud Atlas and his bestselling Knuckle Sandwich.
Below, I share information aboutMark Brandon ‘Chopper’ Readthat I found, compiled and translated from online sources.
Mark Brandon Read was born on 12 November 1954 in Melbourne, Australia. His father was a veteran of the Korean War; his mother a strict Protestant belonging to the Seventh-day Adventist Church. He spent his first five years in a children’s home. Apparently his parents were too busy to make time for him. Mark grew up in Melbourne’s suburbs, in poor neighbourhoods with high crime rates. At school, he was a quarrelsome bully. By 15, he had lost count of his fights and had been beaten in most of them. Encouraged by his mother, his father also beat him frequently. There are allegations of childhood abuse. He remained in state care until 14 and was admitted during adolescence to a psychiatric hospital for children, where he receivedelectroconvulsive therapy.
By his youth, Mark had made a name in street fights and become leader of the Surrey Road gang. He began his criminal career robbing drug dealers in Prahran massage parlours, then progressed to kidnapping and torturing other underworld criminals. He often burned victims’ fingers and toes with a blowtorch or removed them with pliers to extort money. Between 20 and 38, Chopper spent only 13 months outside prison, serving time for armed robbery, assault, weapons offences, impersonating police and kidnapping.In the late 1970s, Read started a prison war in H Division of Pentridge. His group was called the Overcoat Gang because they wore long coats year-round to conceal large-calibre weapons. They had carried out bloody attacks against a rival gang, whose members now posed a problem for him inside. He told prison authorities his life was in danger and he could be ambushed, but they did nothing. Read therefore asked a fellow inmate to cut off his ears, hoping it would get him temporarily removed from the prison.
He was ambushed and stabbed in prison by a member of his own gang. There are several accounts of why. One says his associate thought Mark had gone too far in maiming people and warring with rival gangs, and wanted to end the bloodshed by killing him. Another, also shown in the film, claims his old friend James Loughman had agreed to kill him for the dockworkers’ union. Being the only person who could easily reach Read, held apart from other prisoners in a high-security cell, supports that theory. The treacherous attacker we see in the film died in a fire in the same prison in 1987. Read lost nearly a metre of intestine in the attack. At the time, he was serving a 16-and-a-half-year sentence for taking a judge hostage to secure James Loughman’s release. A man accepts almost 17 years without hesitation for you, and you try to murder him treacherously. Even criminals ought to have honour.
In 1992, Mark Chopper Read was convicted of shootingSydney Michael Edward Collinsin the chest. It happened in Read’s car while travelling to Collins’s home in Evandale, Tasmania. A bullet was found in the back seat, and Collins identified Chopper as the shooter. Chopper maintained his innocence. He was convicted of causing grievous bodily harm, a lesser offence than attempted murder, and ordered detained as a dangerous criminal.
He was released in 1998. In 2002, he was questioned again over Collins’s disappearance; Collins was listed on theAustralian missing persons register. No evidence was found. In his final interview before his death, broadcast on 60 Minutes on 20 October 2013, Read admitted killing Sydney Michael Edward Collins. He said he had no regrets and that Collins had been stupid enough to be shot with his own gun on two separate occasions.
Read is alleged to have been responsible for 19 deaths and involved in 11 others. In a 2013 New York Times interview, Chopper said:‘Look, to be honest, I haven’t killed that many people. Probably about four or seven. It depends how you look at it.’
In 2001, Read appeared in a drink-driving public-service advertisement for thePedestrian Council of Australia. Wearing a red short-sleeved shirt and sitting on a kitchen chair, he pointed to scars around his body and said:
When I was in prison… my face was slashed… my ears were cut off… my eyebrows shaved… there’s a butcher’s knife scar here, an ice-pick scar there… It wasn’t fun. If you drink and drive and are unfortunate enough to hit someone, pray to God you don’t end up in prison.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XpQeZEmien4
In 2005, Read toured Australia in an ‘I’m Innocent’ performance with former Australian rules footballer and then entertainer and television personality Mark ‘Jacko’ Jackson.
He later toured Sydney with a new partner, retired detective Roger Rogerson, and his friend, comedian Doug Chappel. At the 2008 Melbourne International Comedy Festival, Read joined Chappel’s Comics Live in Your Lounge show and they told funny stories together onstage.
In 2006, he appeared in another public-service advertisement, this time against violence towards women. Behind a set of iron bars, Chopper says:
‘I’m Mark Brandon Chopper Read. A lot of people think I’m a tough man. I’m not a tough man, but I’ve brought down plenty who thought they were. The lowest men in prison are pimps and rapists. If you hit a woman, you’re weak and gutless. If you go to prison for beating or raping a woman, you’ll face the consequences. You’ll suffer. We’ll break your neck, you low, gutless, cowardly rat. Be afraid! Because if you go to prison, you’ll have plenty of bloody reasons to be afraid.’
Now that’s what I call a public-service announcement!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g_2M3LrfFAw
On 13 March 2006, he released a rap album called Interview with a Madman.
Read also appeared in the 2002 Australian comedy Trojan Warrior. He allowed his name to be used for an Australian beer called Chopper Heavy. It is brewed in Rutherglen, Victoria, associated with Australia’s most famous outlaw, Ned Kelly. In 1880, at 25, Kelly took to the bush in rebellion against the Victorian police’s oppressive treatment of his family. He melted plough irons to make armour for himself and his companions, rendering them bulletproof. That year, they were captured after running out of ammunition in a prolonged battle with police. Despite 32,000 petitions—a huge number for the period, suggesting he had many admirers—the court ordered his death, and he was hanged four months later.
Mark Chopper Readmade headlines again on 15 December 2008 when police questioned him about an incident in Johnston Street, Collingwood. A man he said he had never seen before had attacked him with an axe. Read explained that he ran to the mechanic across the road, grabbed a metal pipe and shouted, ‘Come here!’ The man angrily jumped into his car and fled. Chopper escaped with a blow to the arm from the blunt end of the axe. He was released after giving a statement at Richmond police station. The attacker he described was never found.Read wrote more than ten books. Some were for children, some collected letters from fans, but most were biographical accounts of his own life and experiences. They achieved very high sales when published, selling more than 500,000 copies. Mark Brandon ‘Chopper’ Read ranks among Australia’s bestselling authors.
Read frequently appeared on radio and television to promote his books, and wrote columns for magazines including British FHM, Zoo Weekly and Ralph.
His remarkable success in selling his criminal past and memories prompted calls to amend federal proceeds-of-crime legislation. Alongside confiscating income directly obtained through crime, critics wanted it to coverindirect earnings such as book sales, television shows and similar activities.
The 2000 film Chopper, for which Eric Bana gained 14 kilograms to portray Read, draws on his books and independent research. It won awards in various categories at several festivals that year.Read also painted more than 100 pictures, which found buyers at high prices.
In 1995, Read married Australian Taxation Office employee Mary-Ann Hodge. They had a son, Charlie. The marriage was brief and ended in divorce in 2001. On 19 January 2003, he married his longtime friend Margaret Cassar. They had a son named Roy Brandon.
Read was diagnosed with hepatitis C in prison, probably contracted from blood on a razor during his time there. In March 2008, doctors told him he had two to five years to live and needed a liver transplant. He refused to begin the transplant process, saying he didn’t want someone else’s organs: ‘It’s not fair. I don’t want a donor transplant. I’m 55; I have no intention of putting my name ahead of a ten-year-old child’s.’
In April 2012, Read was diagnosed with liver cancer. He underwent surgery that July to remove liver tumours. In late September 2013, deteriorating health led to his admission to a private Melbourne hospital. He died on 9 October 2013, aged 58.